Monthly Archives: February 2016

Never has the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Christian Right been on greater display. I think Pope Francis’s comments implicitly questioning the faith of Donald Trump were impetuous and misguided (and I think they have been misrepresented by the media somewhat as well). The pope has no business making off-the-cuff judgments about the faith of particular American presidential candidates based on their policy proposals.

But the rush of evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Franklin Graham to defend Trump’s faith makes me want to gag. We can be sure they will regret it, far more than Jerry Falwell, Sr., regretted defending segregation, and far more than Billy Graham regretted his warm alliance with Richard Nixon.

Do not forget that Franklin Graham openly speculated that Barack Obama – who in my view has made a far more credible profession of faith than Donald Trump – is a Muslim. These are men who – like their fathers – have attached themselves at the hip to the Republican Party, dismissing various Democratic presidential candidates as godless liberals determined to wreck Christian America. And yet they are thoroughly enamored – Falwell is outright seduced – by a man far more likely to wreck this country than any Democratic candidate in recent years.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is no conservative. And while he is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), he has openly bragged about his adulterous affairs, routinely slanders his opponents, and demagogically panders to the worst prejudices in an angry American public. Even more dangerous, he has routinely declared his intention to rule by executive order without regard to constitutional processes, as Senator Ben Sasse has vigorously pointed out. If you think President Obama’s unilateralism has threatened the constitutional order, get ready for far worse with a Republican President Donald Trump.

The blindness of many among the Christian Right is on display as they rush toward Trump as their savior while failing to grasp that he poses a far greater danger to the United States than any candidate in the Democratic Party (just read this comment thread). I sincerely hope Republicans can rally around an alternative before it is too late.

Sean Michael Lucas’s fascinating book, For a Continuing Church, highlights in no uncertain terms the vital importance of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church to the origins of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Next to the authority of Scripture, no other commitment played a more important role in forging the identity of the evangelical Presbyterians who established the PCA. These Presbyterians insisted that the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) had exchanged its spiritual mission of evangelization, summarized in the Great Commission’s call for the church to make and train disciples (Matthew 28:19-20), for the activism of the social gospel.

And yet, Lucas’s book also makes clear just how misleading these evangelical Presbyterians’ self-understanding was. For in point of fact, they were just as concerned about the social and political impact of Presbyterianism as were their progressive rivals, and just as likely to use their religious authority to argue against communism or racial integration as were their opponents to argue against the Vietnam War or segregation. As often as not, it seems, the spirituality of the church doctrine was invoked simply to shut down efforts that were deemed too progressive, only to leave the church free to proclaim the implications of Scripture for a conservative social worldview. In short, many of those who appealed to the doctrine interpreted it through the lens of their own reactionary politics rather than from the standpoint of the gospel of the “kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33), biblically understood. The whole church, the right wing as well as the left, was all too politicized.

At her blog Glenda Mathes has kindly posted her interview with me, which appeared in the August issue of Christian Renewal, following my appointment as assistant professor of moral theology at Calvin Seminary. Glenda concludes the article with my comment on the need for a fresh vision for faithful Christian witness:

We need a vision for faithful Christian witness that is thoroughly Reformed and evangelical. Given the times in which we live, faithfulness will require a greater willingness to be conformed to Christ in his suffering. Standing for the faith, for love, and for justice in conformity to God’s will for his creation is going to be costly. We need to have a clear understanding of the gospel, and we need to recover a clear understanding of what is means for the church to be the church—in preaching, the sacraments, discipline, and the diaconate.

At First Things Richard Mouw joins in on the criticism of Jerry Falwell, Jr., who praised Donald Trump as “one of the greatest visionaries of our time” who “lives a life of helping others . . . as Jesus taught in the New Testament.” Mouw agrees with Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore that Falwell’s comments about Trump politicize the gospel. As Moore tweeted, “Politics driving the gospel rather than the other way around is the third temptation of Christ. He overcame it. Will we?”

What is interesting about Mouw’s piece is that he admits that in the past Calvinists have sometimes failed to overcome that third temptation of Christ. Even more interesting is that he points to Abraham Kuyper as a helpful corrective to this tendency. For those who are used to placing Kuyper in stark opposition to Reformed two kingdoms theology, Mouw’s brief description might begin to free them of that misguided tendency. Kuyper believed all of life falls under the lordship of Christ, of course, as did the classic Reformed two kingdoms tradition, but he also argued that Christ’s lordship calls for the sort of politics that embrace a democratic religious pluralism, as have some more recent Reformed two kingdoms advocates.

Mouw writes,

Mr. Trump promised his Liberty audience that if elected he will “protect Christianity.” People who love the Christian faith certainly could do with some protection these days. But the religious freedom we long for has to come as part of a larger movement for justice that generates a more comprehensive vision for a pluralistic society. It is in the service of that broader vision that we can avoid, as Russell Moore nicely put it, a pattern of “politics driving the gospel rather than the other way around.” If Jerry Falwell, Jr. wants some theological help in understanding that vision, I have a 19th century Calvinist whom I can recommend on the subject.

Falwell is not the only conservative Mouw might have criticized for politicizing the faith. Senator Ted Cruz apparently declared to his followers, “If we awaken and energize the body of Christ – if Christians and people of faith come out and vote their values – we will win and we will turn the country around.” “I want to tell everyone to get ready, strap on the full armor of God, get ready for the attacks that are coming.”

Christians should be very wary of candidates who identify their campaigns so closely with the purposes of God and the gospel faith, just as they should be wary of candidates who needlessly alienate Muslims and those who practice other faiths. Mouw is correct. Justice is nothing if not comprehensive in its vision for a pluralistic society.